<em>Business Insurance</em> announces 2014 Best Places to Work in Insurance winners

A record 75 insurance industry companies are being recognized in this year's Business Insurance Best Places to Work in Insurance program.

Best Places to Work is a joint effort of Business Insurance and the Harrisburg, Pa.-based Best Companies Group.

The program, which involves months of in-depth evaluation, is open to all publicly or privately held property/casualty insurers, group life/health insurers, retail agents and brokers, wholesale brokers/managing general agents, reinsurers, reinsurance brokers, benefits brokers and advisers, and claims managers with at least 25 employees in the United States and serving the commercial insurance market.

This is the sixth year for the Best Places to Work in Insurance program. Companies recognized this year range in size from 30 to 8538 employees.

The 75 companies recognized this year have created high-quality workplaces in which employees can thrive and enjoy doing so.

Best Companies Group, an independent workplace excellence research firm that manages other industry and regional programs in the United States and Canada, managed the registration process, conducted the surveys, evaluated the data and selected the firms chosen as Best Places to Work in Insurance.

The assessment involved a two-part process. One part, responsible for 75% of a company's score, involved a confidential employee engagement and satisfaction survey, which was used to evaluate employees' workplace experience and the company's culture. The other part, which was responsible for the remaining 25% of the score, consisted of an employer questionnaire, which collected information about each company's benefit programs, policies practices and other general information.

The Best Companies Group experts use the data to conduct an in-depth analysis of the strengths and opportunities at each company. Each company has to demonstrate a minimum standard of excellence to earn a spot on the list of Best Places to Work in Insurance.

Business Insurance will reveal how the companies ranked and take a closer look at the 75 companies honored in a special report in the Sept. 29 issue.

Participation in the program was free, although participating companies can buy the BCG Employee Feedback Report that summarizes data collected in the employee survey process.

In addition, the report includes transcribed employee written comments, as well as the industry benchmarking data — which compares companies of similar size — from the participating companies.